Consensually nonmonogamous relationships are defined by explicit mutual agreements to have multiple emotional, romantic, and/or sexual relationships. But is there really a type of person who engages in this type of relationship? And are these relationships actually lower in quality compared with monogamous relationships? Research has revealed several misconceptions about consensually nonmonogamous relationships and patterns of how others judge people in these relationships.  In this episode...

The mass incarceration of Black people in the United States is gaining attention as a public health crisis with extreme mental-health implications. Despite Black Americans making up just 13% of the general U.S. population, Black people constitute about 38% of people in prison or jail. What does this have to do with psychological science? Well, historical efforts to oppress and control Black people in the United States helped shape definitions of crime but also mental illness. And, through its...

While we are fussing about the artificial-intelligence revolution, a demographic revolution may have much more radical consequences: There are more older people than ever in the world. In her last presidential column for the APS Observer, APS President Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about how psychological science may help us to understand and deal with the challenges that come with this increased longevity. An...

A growing problem in research and publishing involves “paper mills”: organizations that produce and sell fraudulent manuscripts that resemble legitimate research articles. This form of fraud affects the integrity of academic publishing, with repercussions for science as well as the general public. How can fake articles be detected? And how can paper mills be counteracted?   In this episode of Under the Cortex, Dorothy Bishop talks with APS’s Ludmila Nunes about the metascience of fraud...

How do you balance innovation and implementation, possibility and practicality? How do you resolve the tension between the lure of the crazy new thing and the safe haven of the tried and true? In her latest presidential column for the APS Observer, APS President Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about what makes children bad at acting effectively but good at learning, exploration, and discovery and how adults—including...

Questions often emerge when researchers tend to engage in research on topics that are personally relevant for them. For example, when someone with depression also studies it, should they disclose their personal interest? How is this type of self-relevant research—“me-search,” as it’s popularly known— perceived by the academic and scientific community?    In a recent study published in Clinical Psychological Science, researchers found that more than 50% of participants had conducted...

The APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recognizes APS members who have made transformative early career contributions to psychological science.  Award recipients reflect the best of the many new and cutting edge ideas coming from of our most creative and promising investigators who together embody the future of psychological science.  The APS 2023 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions joined Ludmila Nunes to talk about their research and careers. In this episode,...

Research contributions can be transformative in various ways, such as the establishment of new approaches or paradigms within a field of psychological science, or the development or advancement of boundary-crossing research.   The APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recognizes APS members who have made transformative early career contributions to psychological science.  The APS 2023 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions joined Ludmila Nunes to talk about their...

Does infidelity predict an unhappy relationship? Or is it the other way around? Can a relationship recover after infidelity?  In a recent study published in Psychological Science, researchers found that relationship functioning starts to decline before infidelity happens and that, in most cases, well-being did not recover in the years following the infidelity. The lead author, Olga Stavrova, a researcher and professor at Tilburg University, explains these findings and elaborates on how they...

Diagnoses often oversimplify complex mental health problems. How can researchers and practitioners avoid oversimplifications, improve research, and provide more effective and customized clinical practices?  A recent article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science presented the advantages of studying mental health problems as systems, not syndromes. The author, APS Fellow Eiko Fried, a psychologist and methodologist at Leiden University, explains this new approach to how we...

Imagine that we designed a fully intelligent, autonomous robot that acted on the world to accomplish its goals. How could we make sure that it would want the same things we do? In her latest presidential column for the APS Observer, APS President Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about how looking at caregivers who raise human children—the parents and grandparents, babysitters and preschool teachers—might help to make sure...

Do fetuses care about what their mothers eat? When do spouses cheat? Does the use of social media predict depression and anxiety?  How can we understand and address older adults’ loneliness? Some of the top articles published in the APS journals in 2022 explored these questions and much more. In this conversation, Ludmila Nunes talks with Amy Drew, who heads up APS’s journals team, for a countdown of the most impactful articles published in 2022. 

Can what we know about an object change the way we see it? Or the way we feel about it? If so, could that be because different brain areas process different features of any given object, such as what we know about its uses?   In this episode of Under the Cortex, APS’s Ludmila Nunes speaks with Dick Dubbelde, a recent postdoc and adjunct professor of psychology and neuroscience at George Washington University, about how quickly and how well we process different objects. “In an environment such...

Human innovation will always be the essential complement to the cultural technologies we create, including artificial intelligence. In her latest presidential column for the APS Observer, APS President Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about how psychology, and especially child psychology, will play a crucial role in creating and using the technology of the future. She reads her column in this episode. 

In the final discussion with social psychologist David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan, APS’s Ludmila Nunes talks with him about the third section of his book, in which he applies his psychological insights to the larger world around us.  Listen to the previous episodes featuring David Myers and his latest book, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind. You’ll get to know more about David’s career and his goals of helping his readers and...

David Myers, a social psychologist and professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan, joined us in the last episode to speak about his latest book, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind. In this episode, he and APS’s Ludmila Nunes discuss the second section of the book, which focuses on who we are, and takes a closer look at a chapter called “Why is everyone else having more fun?”    Read more about David Myers’s new book here.

Social psychologist David Myers, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan, is the author of seventeen books, including psychology’s most widely read textbook. But he doesn’t write only textbooks. For the last several decades, he has translated findings from psychological science for the general public as well, in books on topics ranging from the scientific pursuit of happiness to the powers (and perils) of intuition.     In his new book, How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and...

What is the relationship between music and autobiographical memories?  Why do we like the music that we like? And what are the challenges that a psychological scientist studying music might face throughout their career?     Amy Belfi from the Missouri University of Science and Technology joined APS’s Ludmila Nunes to speak about her career as a neuroscientist studying music perception and cognition as well as how poetry and other forms of art impact brain and behavior.    If you want to know...

Exploration is a fundamental human behavior. Exploring our environment can promote the acquisition of knowledge by exposing us to novelty. Adolescence is a prime time to explore, take risks, and learn, but why is exploration so enticing—and so rewarding—in the lives of teenagers and young adults?    The role of exploration and risk taking in sustaining adolescent well-being and establishing social connectivity is the topic of  a recent article published in Psychological Science. In this...

Can birds be as intelligent as chimpanzees or dolphins? Can they communicate and use language like a child would? Can they even outsmart undergraduate students?  A line of research started more than 40 years ago continues to reveal new findings about parrots’ intelligence and even their ability to use English speech to communicate with humans.  Irene Pepperberg, an APS Fellow and adjunct research professor at Boston University, pioneered the study of bird cognition back in the 70s and still...

What determines how we feel about new technologies? Can an existential approach help us deal with apocalyptic fears about the climate crisis? And does having brothers or sisters influence our personality? New research in APS journals explores these questions and much more, including what makes a joke funny and how social support can prevent depression in breast-cancer survivors. In this episode of Under the Cortex, cognitive psychologist Ludmila Nunes and her colleague Amy Drew, APS’s...

How did attitudes about race, sexuality, age, or disability change in the last decade or so? In the United States, it appears that bias decreased across all explicit attitudes, but implicit biases decreased only for certain attitudes, including sexuality and race. Moreover, biases have remained stable for variables such as age or disability. What can these patterns of change tell us about our society and the different nature of certain attitudes?     Researchers examined more than 7 million...

Anywhere between 17% and 38% of adolescents and young adults engage in behaviors of nonsuicidal self-injury, defined as “the deliberate, self-inflicted damage of body tissue without suicidal intent.” These behaviors, which might include cutting, scratching, head-banging, and burning, sometimes help people cope with negative emotions or even serve to keep them from attempting actual suicide, but they can also pose real harms.      A recent study in Clinical Psychological Science explores the...

Adverse early experiences, quite literally, can kill. In her latest presidential column for the APS Observer, APS President Alison Gopnik, who studies learning and development at the University of California, Berkeley, writes about the growing moral and scientific case for early childhood policies that can mitigate or prevent the effects of experiences such as poverty, physical or emotional neglect and abuse, and mental illness, addiction, and violence in the home. She reads her column in...

How people judge others’ bodies might be influenced by what they are used to seeing in magazines, TV, or social media. Recent research suggests that women’s judgments about other women’s bodies can be biased by an overrepresentation of thinness.   In a recent study published in Psychological Science, young women were more likely to judge bodies they had previously considered “normal” as overweight when they were repeatedly exposed to samples of computer-generated female bodies that became...